Castle Swap: New York - Stockholm - Some Zombies, 200 Acres, No Kids

The Knife’s “Silent Shout” was chosen as the No. 1 album of 2006 by the influential music site Pitchfork. The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson and her brother Olof Dreijer have worked with fellow Swede Robyn on user-friendly material like “Who’s That Girl?,” but their stock in trade is spooking the bejeezus out of you with electronical machines. Do you not believe me? Look at their idea of a Web site. They will terrify you into joining their fanbase. No? Then think for a moment how you’d feel about them hearing that you didn’t like their haunted-house boogie. Not so good, right? You’d rather just fall in line, yes? Safety first.

There is a recent tendency in American female pop stars to look to Europe for inspiration in the middle of their careers. Madonna reached out to William Orbit and Mirwais for the 2000 album “Music.” Christina Aguilera and producer Linda Perry aped Goldfrapp for the single “Keeps Gettin’ Better,” and Aguilera then asked the actual Goldfrapp to work on her new album. The next step: Someone big will channel The Knife for their next single, with or without the actual The Knife.

If you want to know how high the bar is, then listen to Fever Ray, Andersson’s new solo project, which is more or less the perfect test case (seeing as how she’s in The Knife and all). Fever Ray sounds roughly like The Knife with the party music taken out, though this is an almost meaningless distinction. The Knife doesn’t exactly make party music, even when it does.

If you collect skeleton headsocks and are friends with lots of zombies, you will love the video for Fever Ray’s “If I Had A Heart.” (I think the verb “to have” works here in its secondary form, as in, “If I had eggs for breakfast or maybe oatmeal or maybe your still-pumping heart after I throw you into the swimming pool and tear it out of you.”)

Even if the music isn’t your thing, who do you think could get Knifey for album six? Who could use the Andersson trick of pitch-shifting their voice down until it sounds like a scary male butler? Could this be the next step after Auto-Tune? If so, then let’s figure out who can take it to the people. J Lo? Beyoncé? Britney? It could solve her paparazzi problem forever. (I am not suggesting the obvious candidates.)

Sasha Frere-Jones worked at The New Yorker as a staff writer and pop-music critic for ten years, beginning in 2004.

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